The Harvest

It took him a second to work out the implication.

She waved him over. “It’s Miriam Flett. Miriam won’t leave her house—it’s too stormy to drive, she says. She thinks she’ll be safe where she is.”

Matt checked his watch again. “How about if we send someone to pick her up? Would she be willing to go with an escort?”

“Matt, do we have time? It’s getting bad awfully fast.”

“Ask her if she’s willing.”

Abby took her hand away from the receiver. “Miriam? Miriam, how about if we send somebody? Somebody to drive? Because we’re not sure your house is safe enough. No. But it’s not just the wind, Miriam. There’s the storm surge to worry about. Flooding, yes. You might be too close to the water. I know, but… yes, dear, but… but if we send someone, how would that be?”

Five-fifty, according to his Timex.

Abby covered the receiver again. “She’s willing to go, but she wants to know who to expect.”

“Tell her I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Matthew? Are you sure?”

He shrugged. “I’m already wet.”

“Well—you be careful. We can’t afford to lose the town doctor.”

“Tell Miriam to make sure she’s packed.”

“All right. We won’t barricade the door until you’re back.”

“No. But do it if you have to.”

Ordinarily it would have been a five-minute drive from the hospital to Miriam’s bungalow on Bellfountain Avenue. Allowing for the weather, Matt had estimated twice that. Outside, he wondered whether he should have doubled it again.

Coming around Commercial, he managed to stop just short of a toppled Douglas fir. The tree was a giant, old growth left to mature next to a grocery store parking lot; its trunk obstructed the road as neatly as a fence. It would mean a detour, but not a long one: another block south and left to the highway. He backed up, sweating despite the cold.

The fallen tree made the storm seem suddenly real, an immediate danger. For Matt, a kind of emotional electricity always accompanied even a modest summer cloudburst. He used to love the sight of a storm coming in around the crest of Mt. Buchanan, the thunder rolling up the slopes. Grotesque as it seemed, maybe he had been getting the same kind of pleasure from this storm.

But the fallen tree had cut his euphoria as neatly as it divided the road. This wasn’t a cloudburst or an out-of-season thunderstorm. This was something immensely more powerful, an engine wound on a column of air as tall as a mountain. It had the power to lift, to compel, to move, slash, shatter; to destroy. It could pick up his car and spin it like a top—probably would, if not now, then in an hour or two hours. It had already toppled this ancient fir, and the storm had not even begun. This was only its curtain-opener, its prelude.

He circled down to Marina with his high beams on. The storm had blotted up all but the last trickle of daylight; streetlights cast a feeble iridescence into the gloom. Every house he passed was dark. The Contactees had turned out the lights before they left, a universal primness as alien as their means of departure.

Coming toward the highway along a familiar residential road, he was startled to see a house with windows blazing yellow light… even more startled when he recognized it as the house where Jim and Lillian Bix had lived for the last ten years.

He looked at his watch, fretted a moment, then pulled over to the curb.

The house wasn’t fortified against the storm. The windows weren’t taped or shuttered. Matt hoped the building was simply unoccupied, the lights left burning for no good reason—but then he saw a shadow against the downstairs curtains, a motion there and gone again.

He sighed and climbed out of the car. He was instantly wet, wetter than before, the rain drilling through his topcoat. He ran to the shelter of the porch, knocked once, waited, and knocked again.

Jim Bix opened the door.

Matt recognized him immediately, although his friend had changed.

The last time he had seen Jim Bix was when they argued over Lillian’s pregnancy, Jim insisting she didn’t need prenatal medical care: the Travellers would protect her. And Jim had cut his hand, and the blood had been viscous and very dark.

Now Jim stood in the doorway, haphazardly dressed, as tall and ugly as he had ever been… but thi

Matt thought of the empty skin he had inspected at Tom Kindle’s house. It looked like his old friend wasn’t far from that condition.

“Thank you for stopping,” Jim said. His voice was a husky whisper. “But it’s not necessary, Matt. We’re fine. You should get under shelter.”

He said, somewhat breathlessly, “So should you.”

“Really—we’re fine.”

“Is Lillian here?”

Jim hesitated, still blocking the doorway. Matt called out, “Lillian? Are you all right?”

No answer—or if there was, it was masked by the roar of the wind along the overflowing eaves.

Lillian would have been three months from her due date by now. “The baby,” Matt said. “Is that why you’re still here when everyone else is gone? Jim, for Christ’s sake, is it the baby?”

The thing that had been Jim Bix peered frowning at him but failed to answer. Frustrated, frightened, Matt pushed past him into the house.

Jim fell away instantly from the pressure, and Matt sensed his lightness, the terrible lack of solid weight behind his ribs.

“Lillian?”

“Matt,” Jim said. “It would be better if you left. Will you leave?”

“I want to see her.”

“She doesn’t need medical care.”

“So you say. I haven’t examined her since Contact.”

“Matt—” His friend looked at him mournfully. “You’re right. It was the baby that kept us here. Lillian wanted to finish the pregnancy. But the storm—it would be awkward to linger past tonight. This is a private moment, Matt. Please leave.”

“What do you mean, finish the pregnancy? You mean she’s having the baby?”

“Not exactly. We—”

“Where is she?”

“Matt, don’t force this on yourself.”

The front door was still open. Distantly, from somewhere down the street, came the sharp sound of a window shattered by the wind.

He felt driven by the need to see Lillian and speak to her; or, if not, to know what had overtaken her, know precisely what maze of transformation she had stumbled into. Maybe he wasn’t being reasonable. He didn’t care. She was his patient.

“Lillian?” He stepped into the kitchen; it was empty. “Lillian!” Shouting up the stairs.

Jim, too fragile to stop this, stood aside and gazed at him with a vast sadness in his cavernous eyes. “Matt,” he said finally. “Matt, please stop. She’s in the bedroom off the hallway.”

He hurried there and threw open the door.

Lillian was naked on the bed.

Her ribs were stark against her papery flesh, and her eyes were as strange as her husband’s, though browner. She raised her head to look at him and seemed unsurprised by his entrance.

Her legs were spread. There was no blood, but Matt recognized with horror that she had delivered… something.

It resembled a shriveled homunculus—a monkey fetus, perhaps, as preserved on the shelf of some medieval apothecary. It was quite dry, quite motionless.

His horror was overtaken by an immense, weary sorrow. He looked at Lillian. Her face was bland. She had wanted a baby very badly. “Lillian,” he whispered. “Dear God.”

“Matt,” she said calmly. “You don’t understand. This is not the baby. You must understand that. This is only an end product. The baby is with us! He’s been with us for some months now. A boy. He’s alive, Matt, do you understand me?” She tapped her head. “Alive here.” And spread her arms. “Here.” The Greater World.